Stones of Yule
by Brownbug
Summary: Captain Jack Harkness was expecting to have a quiet solitary Christmas. Until, that was, Rex Matheson lands on his doorstep with an intriguing mystery to be solved. Post-Miracle Day fic written for @fayegreener over on DW Secret Santa.
1. Chapter 1

The rap at the door was sharp and peremptory. Not the knock of someone collecting for a Christmas charity or a random vacuum cleaner salesman. Besides, it was just before midnight and it was snowing steadily outside. Not the kind of weather for chance visitors.

Jack's head jerked up and his muscles tensed. Without volition, his hand moved to his Webley pistol, drawing it noiselessly from its holster. Very few people knew that he was here, and that was the way he liked it.

Cautiously, he got to his feet, and made his way down the dingy passageway leading to the front entrance. Away from the crackling fire, the air was cold enough to condense into white mist in front of his face as he breathed. The old boards creaked ominously under his feet. Inwardly, he cursed at the betraying noise and hoped none of them were rotten enough to give. Beyond the old-fashioned, semi-opaque glass panels inset into the door, he could just make out the outline of a shadowy figure, waiting on the doorstep.

Holding his arm straight down at his side, the gun concealed in the folds of his heavy military coat, he swung wide the door, his eyes hard and alert. Standing outside, with his back to Jack, was a stocky man in a black overcoat, the shoulders dusted with white flakes of snow. At the sound of the door opening, he turned, revealing a familiar handsome, ebony-skinned face.

It was an effort for Jack to keep the surprise from his expression, but somehow he managed it.

"Rex," he said, his tone wary as he greeted his visitor. The CIA agent was a friend, of sorts. Together, they had taken down the Miracle and saved the world. But that didn't explain why he was here now, in Wales, a week before Christmas, standing on Jack's doorstep in the middle of the night.

"Hey, World War Two," Rex responded. He nodded towards the gun held at Jack's side. "Jumpy as ever, I see."

"Yeah, well, you know me. I really hate carol singers," Jack quipped.

"You gonna ask me in, or do I have to stand out here all night in the snow?"

Jack hesitated, his eyes scanning the quiet street outside for any threat. He could never be sure he wasn't being watched. This could be some sort of set-up. At the very least, Rex could have been followed. However, he couldn't see anything strange or out of place. The surface of the road was covered with a fresh layer of pristine snow, glittering under the urine-yellow street lamps, and a chill breeze whispered through the leafless trees that lined the street. Nothing moved, not even a stray cat. It was almost _too_ quiet.

He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, stepping back to allow Rex to enter. " _Mi casa_ es _su casa."_

Once the other man was inside, he closed the door firmly and flipped the locks. Only then did he holster his weapon and turn to face Rex.

The CIA agent was looking around the grimy entrance hall, one eyebrow raised as his quick eyes took in his surroundings. "Nice place you got here. I like what you've done with the décor. Dust and cobwebs. Very gothic. Very you."

The house belonged to Jack. He'd bought it long ago, back before the turn of the century, and had all but forgotten about it. It had never been much to look at – tall and thin, sandwiched in between two other dwellings of similar ilk.

Since then, like so much of Cardiff, the area had moved onwards and upwards, renewed and renovated and gentrified. The address on the left was now an upmarket architect's office. The one on the right was frequented by people interested in undergoing discreet plastic surgery.

Jack's house had remained just the same, empty, slightly dingy, a little run down at the heel. He'd had many offers to buy it over the years, via his solicitors, from bright-eyed young developers, their eager, greedy faces lit with the desire to make a profit. He'd turned them all down, even though he hadn't visited the house in years.

He was glad of it now. With the Hub destroyed and most of his team dead, he'd had nowhere else to go, once he'd returned to Cardiff after the Miracle had ended. The interior was cold and spartan, ill-furnished and bleak, the rooms blanketed in a thick carpet of dust and festooned with spiderwebs.

"It's temporary," was all he said to Rex. He had no intention of explaining that he still hadn't decided for sure whether he was staying on Earth. After all that had happened, commitment was beyond him. He was content just to live from day to day, without giving much thought to the future. He was here now, today, at this moment. And that was all he could guarantee.

He looked the other man up and down. Outwardly, Rex hadn't changed much in the year since he'd last seen him. The same dark suit, worn under his overcoat; the same white, open-necked shirt. The same closely-cut dark hair, worn almost in a military style. The same half-belligerent curl to his lip, which said that anyone who dared to get up in his face was going to regret it.

Inwardly, though... there was a weary look in his eyes that hadn't been there before. A dull resignation, mixed with a spark of simmering resentment and anger. Jack knew those emotions, he was one of the few people on Earth who could understand them. He'd seen them often enough, centuries ago, back when he'd first become an immortal, reflected in his own eyes, every time he'd glanced in a mirror. The struggle for acceptance of their condition wasn't an easy one. And he guessed that the CIA agent was stubborn enough to make it even more difficult.

"What are you doing here, Rex? What's happened?"

Rex snorted. "Can't one old buddy make a Christmas visit to another old buddy without there being some sort of problem?"

"When it's you and me?" Jack raised a sardonic eyebrow. "No. So come on, spill. What's going on?"

"Fine. So there's something. But is there somewhere warmer we could discuss it? My buns are freezing off out here."

"There's a fire through here." Jack led the way down the corridor, to the living room at the back of the house. All the rooms they passed were dark and desolate, filled with nothing but the looming, ghostly shapes of dust-sheeted furniture.

The living room looked marginally better than the rest of the house. It was cleaner, for a start, and warmer. The fireplace was bright with cheerful, crackling flames. Several ragged old armchairs were grouped around the hearth, where an old packing crate was serving as a low table. There was a pizza box still sitting on it, containing the remains of Jack's dinner. Not a particularly nutritious meal, perhaps, but it wasn't as if he had to worry about high cholesterol. Over to one side, there was a camp bed set up, with a couple of pillows and an ancient patchwork quilt. Beneath it was the faded old rucksack that held all the worldly goods of one Captain Jack Harkness. It wasn't much to show, some would say, for over two thousand years of life. But time and experience had lessened his interest in material possessions. The days when he had been an intergalactic conman, living on the edge for the sake of a profit, now seemed very far away.

He sat down in one of the chairs, and gestured Rex into the other, reaching as he did for a whiskey bottle sitting within close range.

"Drink?"

Rex plopped himself down and held his hands out to the fire. "I thought you'd never ask."

After fishing around on the makeshift table for a moment, Jack managed to produce a couple of plastic tumblers, which he filled generously.

The other man accepted one and raised it to Jack in a mock salute. "Cheers!" Then he tossed the neat alcohol back like water.

Unwilling to be out-matched, Jack did the same, feeling the burn of the amber liquid as it poured down his throat and warmed the pit of his stomach. Whatever Rex had to say, he figured it could only be improved by a slug of exquisitely aged single malt whiskey.

"So?" he prompted, eyeing the other man narrowly.

Rex took the bottle and poured himself another shot, before leaning back in his chair, his dark eyes fixed on Jack's face. "So... last night, I got a phone call from an old pal of mine. He's currently on secondment to the Home Office in London. It seems they've been looking for you."

There was a slight hiss as Jack exhaled between his teeth. "Is that right?"

"Apparently, they lost track of you in the aftermath of Miracle Day." Rex hesitated. "They need your help."

"The last time I tried to help the British Government, they planted a bomb in my stomach and blew both me and my secret base to hell," Jack replied, a shade of bitterness colouring his voice. "So you can see why I might not be too eager to volunteer my services again."

"Yeah, well, that was a different administration. And believe me, Jack, I get why they might not be on top of your Christmas card list. But people are dying, and not in a nice way. According to my buddy in the Home Office, there's evidence of alien involvement."

Jack leaned forward to grab the poker, stabbing at the embers with unnecessary force, his usually-mobile mouth a thin, hard line. "So? Let UNIT deal with it. Last I heard, the government wasn't gunning for them."

"UNIT are spread too thin, mopping up after Miracle Day," Rex said patiently.

That much, Jack could believe. After all, it wasn't as if he and Gwen had been sitting on their hands. They'd been flat out doing much the same thing as UNIT, just in a less official capacity. After the events of Miracle Day, the world had been in a total mess, just as the Families had planned. Entire economies had collapsed, governments across the globe were in chaos, medical systems were under pressure, and there was general social upheaval, often requiring military intervention to maintain order. Things were gradually starting to repair themselves over time, but it was a slow process.

But the main problem, of which most people on Earth were blissfully ignorant, was that the turmoil on their planet had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the Universe. Jack and Gwen had been run off their feet dealing with alien incursions. Some of them were merely inquisitive, such as the boisterous group of young students from the Anthropology Department of the University on Thogost, bent on enjoying a field trip to a primitive planet. However, some of them were not so benign, such as the scouting party for a Sontaran war fleet that had turned up a few weeks ago, seeking to take advantage of the confusion across the world to launch an invasion. Jack had his work cut out for him, using every resource he had available, to keep the Earth safe and to put out the message to any other extra-terrestrials watching that the planet was still protected.

Whatever threat the Home Office had detected, it had obviously slipped under the radar while he was otherwise occupied.

"What do you want from me, Rex? And why are you involved in this anyway? It's a bit out of your jurisdiction, isn't it?"

"I figure, after everything that happened back at the Blessing, Torchwood's stuck with me and I'm stuck with Torchwood," the CIA agent responded gruffly. "And if I'm a still member of the team, that makes this my jurisdiction. If it's alien, it's ours, right?"

"Yeah." Jack observed him closely, trying to wrap his mind around the implications of having another immortal on the team. Or having another immortal /anywhere/. He was so used to having to carry the burden alone. "How did you find me, anyway?"

Rex shrugged. "Gwen and I have kept in touch."

That wasn't so surprising, even though Gwen had never mentioned it. She had always been the beating heart of Torchwood, the one that brought compassion to their work. It would be like her to want to keep an eye on Rex, after the shock he'd experienced when he discovered what he had become.

"All right... fine. Let's just suppose, for argument's sake, I was willing to help. Exactly what do the Home Office need me to sort out?"

Reaching into the pocket of his overcoat, Rex produced a small packet. One by one, he drew out some photos – ten in all – and laid them on top of the pizza box in two neat lines.

Jack glanced down at them. The images were all similar, depicting human remains, each of them apparently mummified. The bodies were shrunken, as if every drop of moisture had been drained from them, leaving the flesh dry and desiccated, stretched tightly over the bones. Hollow eye sockets stared back at Jack, gaping jaws grinned. At a guess, he would have said they were ancient, maybe even thousands of years old.

Rex must have guessed his train of thought, because he said curtly, "Less than a month ago, all these people were walking around, as hale and as hearty as you and me."

"Who are they?" Jack asked. Despite his disinclination to have anything to do with the Home Office, his curiosity was stirring. This was exactly the sort of case Torchwood had once handled, back in the old days. Back when the Hub had still existed, and Ianto had been alive, and Owen, and Tosh. Back when everything had made sense. "And what happened to them?"

"They were all tourists, who went walking in the Brecon Beacons, here in Wales. And never came home." Rex had a deep frown on his face. "As for what happened to them, nobody knows. Apart from the fact that their bodies have been completely exsanguinated. According to the autopsy reports, it occurred through the pores of their skin. They literally sweated blood until there was none left. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Some sort of disease?"

"Nothing that's shown up on the path reports. And no sign of any toxins either. These were perfectly healthy human beings who bled to death in the space of a few, excruciating moments."

"Living in the countryside isn't always as good for you as it's cracked up to be. It wouldn't be the first time something strange went on out in the Brecon Beacons," Jack said, thoughtfully rubbing the back of his neck. "Last time I investigated tourists disappearing out that way, I turned up a nasty little nest of cannibals. Not the sort of folk you'd want asking you over for dinner. Not unless you were happy with being the main course."

Rex pulled another piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it so that Jack could see. It was a map of the Brecon Beacons, marked in red with a rough circle, scattered with Xs. "The other strange thing about these killings is that if you plot the locations where the bodies were discovered on a map, they form an almost perfect circle. With the village of Adnewyddu dead in the centre."

He extended a stubby forefinger to point at the red dot that represented the place he was talking about.

Jack smoothed some of the creases from the map, studying it carefully. "So... what do we know about the village?"

"It's a tiny, out of the way little place. Not much more than a general store, a pub and a church, surrounded by a cluster of houses," Rex shrugged. "Population of around one hundred and fifty, from what I can gather. They get a mention here and there in the tourist guidebooks because there's a circle of standing stones on a nearby hilltop. That's the only thing even remotely interesting about it though. The Cardiff police have been through it with a fine tooth comb, but they didn't find any connection to the bodies."

"Yeah, well... that doesn't mean there isn't one." Leaning over, Jack methodically banked the fire and pulled the screen across the fireplace. Then he got to his feet. "Come on, then. Let's go check it out."

"What... now?" Rex said, with some surprise. "I just got here."

"You wanted my help, didn't you? No time like the present. Unless you've got some place else more pressing to be. In this weather, it could take us a few hours to reach Adnewyddu."

As he spoke, Jack pulled out the Webley, and double-checked that the bullets were chambered correctly.

With a low-voiced curse, Rex levered himself wearily out of his chair. "You know, I'd almost forgotten how goddamn annoying you can be, Harkness."

Jack grinned in genuine amusement. "Then it will be my pleasure to remind you, Agent Matheson."

And leaving Rex to follow, he strode towards the door, his greatcoat swirling around his ankles.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks so much to the folk who reviewed the last chapter, you guys are the best. So nice to see that so many of the wonderful people I used to talk to before are still around, as well as some lovely new readers! Anyway, I'd already written another chapter of this one, so here it is. Wishing you all a safe and Happy New Year.**

* * *

 **CHAPTER TWO**

Jack had been right about the heavy snow causing havoc with their journey. Even in the Torchwood SUV, the roads were slick and icy, growing more difficult to navigate, the further they got from Cardiff. Rex stared out the passenger window at the moonlit snowdrifts piled high along the verge, while Jack clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, doing his best not to let the vehicle slip off the road. The weather reports on the radio were not promising, forecasting more flurries before morning.

"Man, this is some godforsaken country," the CIA agent muttered to himself, shaking his head.

Concentrating on the way ahead, Jack didn't answer, at first. It was bittersweet for him to drive this SUV, even at the best of times. Gwen had somehow managed to salvage it from the scene of destruction at the Hub, and together they'd had it repaired. It still smelled of smoke and burnt rubber and probably always would, after what it had gone through, even if just in his imagination. It was something they had left from the old days, though – a memory he could hang on to, when the ache in his heart insisted that everything was lost. Sometimes, when he turned his head, he still expected to see Owen slouching in the seat beside him, or to hear some of Ianto's dry Welsh wit coming from the back seat. Sometimes, the wound was still so raw that he just wanted to scream and scream and never stop.

"If we'd left it any later, we probably wouldn't have gotten through at all," he commented, peering through the windscreen, as the relentless wipers swished a light spattering of snow aside. "The Brecon Beacons are beautiful in the summer, hence the attraction for hikers. But they can be hellishly bleak in the winter."

He slanted a glance across at Rex. The other man had slumped back in his seat, his head hunched down into the collar of his jacket, an expression of weary resignation on his face. Jack returned his eyes to the road. He'd never been much good at the personal counselling side of leadership. That part, he'd usually left up to Gwen. But Rex was in a unique and terrible position that no-one else could ever understand. Jack could remember the early days, when he'd first discovered his own immortality. Waiting patiently for over a century for some answers from the friend who had abandoned him, seeing everyone he cared about die all around him, helplessly watching the world change while he remained forever the same. He had never blamed the Doctor for what had happened back on Satellite Five, even though it had been a direct result of travelling with the Time Lord. Nonetheless, it still hurt that after all he had done, the Doctor had never come back to try to help him, leaving him all alone to come to terms with what he'd become. It occurred to him now that, centuries later, Rex was in exactly the same position he had been in, having unwittingly become immortal through his association with Jack. And now, Jack had a choice of his own to make – to run from the situation, as the Doctor had done... or to try to help.

For a few moments, he drummed his fingers on the wheel and listened to the silence. Then he cleared his throat and asked, "So... how're you doing, Rex?"

A loud snort emitted from behind the other man's coat collar. "How am I doing? Just peachy, thanks to you, World War Two. Life's one long party... one that goes on forever and never ends. I couldn't be happier."

Jack winced a little at the bitterness in the CIA agent's voice. This was one conversation that he really didn't want to have. But he owed it to Rex and so he made himself persist.

"Really?" His tone was low and sceptical.

There was a slight movement beside him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Rex's hands had clenched into tight fists. For a fleeting second, he was worried that the other immortal might take a swing at him, even though he was driving.

But then Rex spoke again, his voice gruff and laced with torment. "How do you bear it, Jack? How do you wake up every morning, knowing that everything around you is a day older, but you're not? That, slowly, everything you love is slipping away from your grasp, and you can't stop it? That one day, you're going to outlive not only your friends and family, but the sun itself? Because that's what you've done to me. How the _hell_ am I supposed to go on, with that burden weighing on what's left of my soul?"

"You make it count." Jack's answer was sure and certain. "Each and every day. We can't die, Rex, but we can still lose ourselves. There will always be a pit of darkness and insanity yawning at your feet, that's part of what you are now. You can stand still and let it consume you. Or you can find something worth fighting for. And that's what you do. You _fight_. For me, that's what Torchwood is all about. Preserving everything that's good about the Earth. Protecting the future. Making it count."

"Making it count," Rex echoed softly, as if he was turning the words over in his mind.

"Just... don't get to like it too much." Sudden grief threatened to choke the advice in Jack's throat. "Don't... _ever_... start to think that you're a god. Because, in the end, we're not. We're just men who live too long. One day... they'll bring you a decision that no-one else can make... a decision that no living being should ever have to make. And you'll have to live with the consequences forever."

One child... or millions... Decker's loathsome voice still rang in his head. He could still see Steven's trusting blue eyes... still hear that single, terrible note as it sang from his grandson's throat... and in the background, his daughter's anguished pounding on the door, pleading for her son's life, a plea he could not grant. And then the twitching had begun, the horrifying shaking, as the child's brain slowly burnt, fried from within from the excruciating frequency, and Jack couldn't look away like the others did, because this was his fault and he deserved to watch... his fault, just as Suzie had been his fault, and Owen and Tosh and Ianto. All the people who had trusted him and whom he'd been unable to save...

He was barely aware of Rex turning his head towards him, until the other man spoke. "Is that what happened to you? To your team?"

"Yeah."

The word was brief and curt, but it contained an indescribable world of pain. A sheen of unshed tears glistened in his blue eyes as he gazed fixedly at the snowy road unwinding before them.

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"Yeah, me too."

All at once, there was nothing else to say. To alleviate the awkwardness, Jack reached out and flipped on the radio, filling the car with the incongruously upbeat sound of some 1950s rock 'n' roll. Rex slouched back in his seat, staring silently out at the darkening landscape as the SUV sped through the night, leaving the lights of Cardiff far behind.

In the end, a trip that should have taken a little over an hour in fine weather took them nearly three. The sky was starting to lighten to the east as the SUV arrived on the outskirts of the remote village of Adnewyddu. As Jack had said, in summer, it probably would have been a lovely place, perched high on a steep hillside known as Ysgwydd Diafol, or the 'Devil's Shoulder', and overlooking the grassy moorland in the valley far below. But in winter, with the early morning temperature dipping below freezing, the inhospitable landscape was layered in snow and sheets of glittering ice.

As soon as the Captain caught sight of the weathered old sign marking the edge of the village, he pulled over to the side of the road. Flipping back the cover of his wrist-computer, he punched some buttons, keeping an eye critically on the small readout screen.

"What're you doing now?" Rex asked impatiently. His tone was decidedly grouchy, but he figured he could be excused for that, since he was tired and hungry and had been up for 48 hours straight.

"Scanning for chronon-particles."

"Chronon what now?" The scowl on Rex's face deepened. "Mind translating your Torchwood mumbo jumbo for the resident non-geek?"

Jack sighed. "Chronon particles. The fallout from temporal disruption. Like radiation. You can look at the way the particles degenerate to trace where they came from in the first place. For instance, the Rift has a very particular particle-decay signature."

"So... you getting anything?" Despite his outward disdain of the Torchwood tech, Rex couldn't hide his interest, as he leaned over and examined the device on Jack's wrist. However, all he could see were some blinking lights and a scrawl of incomprehensible data across the small screen.

"Yeah. Up there." Jack tilted his head towards the top of Ysgwydd Diafol. "There's something up there that's come through the Time Vortex. But not through the Rift. This has a different decay signature altogether."

Following his line of sight, where the icy crags were slowly emerging into visibility in the grey dawnlight, Rex groaned aloud. "You're going to tell me we have to go up there, aren't you?"

Opening the car door, Jack let in a rush of freezing air, giving him a wide, bright grin. The same sort of grin that a geriatric nurse might give a recalcitrant patient faced with yet another basket-weaving class. "Welcome to Torchwood. _Fun_ , isn't it?"

Rex muttered something ambiguous and extremely uncomplimentary under his breath. Unsure whether he was referring to Torchwood or to Wales in the winter or to Jack himself, the Captain decided with perverse satisfaction that it was probably all three. Reaching into the glovebox, he drew out a high-powered maglite flashlight, and tossed it to his disgruntled colleague. "Here, you'll need this."

Together, they made the arduous climb to the crest of the hulking hillside. It was a slow process. With the narrow, slippery path illuminated only by the flickering yellow torchlight, they had to take great care not to lose their footing and stumble into any of the deep drifts of snow along the way. The snow had stopped falling, but it was still freezing cold. Jack shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat, but his toes were almost numb inside his boots by the time he reached the top.

As they emerged out on to the grassy knoll, they were stopped in their tracks by a spectacular sight. Only an hour ago, the blackness had been absolute. But now the dawn was breaking, the sun peeking over the silver and pink horizon, shimmering rays tracing translucent paths of light through a halo of winter-grey clouds. In the foreground, just in front of them, stood a group of ancient, lichen-covered monoliths, standing in a solemn circle, silhouetted against the rising daylight. The feel of the place was eerie in the extreme. The stones glowed with a pearly light, showcased by the glory of the skies above, and the silence was almost deafening. No breeze stirred the grass, no small creatures through the leaves. Beneath their feet, the ground seemed to hum with eldritch potency, vibrating through their shoes and up through their bodies, singing through their blood. It was as if they had entered some sort of spell and there was no way out.

"There's... there's no snow up here," Rex whispered hoarsely. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see that the other man was as awestruck as he was. What's more, he was right. Unlike the rest of the frozen hillside, the grass up here, in the area encircled by the stones, was summer-green.

"Leylines," Jack replied, his voice hushed, entranced by the otherworldly vision. "It's a waypoint. The stones are situated on a convergence of psi energy."

Even as he spoke, the light shifted again, with one of the mercurial changes so common to the Brecon Beacons, and the silver radiance of the circle faded away, leaving nothing but ordinary stones. Picturesque, but no longer unearthly and magical. Suddenly, they could hear the usual early morning sounds of the birds waking and a light breeze blowing. The ground they were standing on was now nothing but unremarkable turf.

Rex blinked in astonishment. "Was that even... real?"

"Depends on what you call real," Jack said wryly. "But if you're asking if it happened... yeah, it did."

Warily, he began to walk towards the nearest gap in the circle of stones, gesturing for Rex to follow. "Come on. We still have a killer to find."


End file.
